- Thomas Jefferson
I've quoted this President Jefferson quote before; I used to think that what he said didn't make sense. In my healing process, though, I've realized that it takes a watchful eye to maintain this kind of lifestyle: a spiritually-based lifestyle of rigorous honesty, with the freedom to feel one's feelings, the responsibility to not nurse resentments, and the intense desire to draw closer and closer to God.
There's a Bible verse that is very largely misunderstood; well, at least I misunderstood it, for a lot of years. It says, "Keep your heart above all things, for out of it spring the issues of life." (Proverbs 4:23) I thought it was cross-referenced with "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked..." (Jeremiah 17:9) - but in fact, the opposite is true. Proverbs 4:23 in the Hebrew literally means, "Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life." (NASB) The underlying meaning is that the heart is so important and so precious, being the seat of emotions and will, that its well-being and health must be guarded at all times.
The Jeremiah passage refers to the unregenerate / godless heart. But Solomon (in Proverbs) was giving advice to his son whom he raised to respect God; he encouraged him to guard the center of his mind, will, and emotions at all cost so that it was functioning the way it was designed to work, so that his insides would serve him well. That takes work. HARD work.
Complacency is the lazy cousin of arrogance - and it's one I know quite well. Yes, I've come a long way in what can be considered a very short time. But that in no way means that I've arrived; there is always more to discover, more to turn over to God, more layers of manipulation, of self-deception, of powerlessness in me. The tyranny of the urgent takes over. Boredom slimes its way into my daily routine. The "insanity" of my addiction to "fixing" or "rescuing" people, very easily returns when complacency creeps in.
Something I hear quite frequently sounds like this: "It is easy to let up on our spiritual program of recovery and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do. For our addiction is a subtle foe. We are not cured of our addiction; what we have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." (The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, adapted) That passage reminds me of something a Bible camp counselor told me one time after I described a spiritual awakening I had when I was a teen: "The problem with a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) is that it keeps trying to crawl off the altar."
The process of healing (or 'recovery' as I like to call it) contains spiritual tools that can be used at any time as needed for maintenance. It's just like fixing up a fixer-upper. That refurbished house is going to need upkeep in order to keep it looking good and to keep the leaks of air and water away. If someone hurts me, or hurts me again, and I've let resentment creep back in, then I need to work through the process of forgiveness - and rely completely on God to give me the strength to deal with that. If I screw up - and I do, often - I need to become willing (through God's strength) to apologize, and then go do it. It keeps me humble, dependent on God for everything.
Maintaining my spiritual condition is crucial to my continued recovery. If I'm not progressing, moving forward in my walk with God, then I'm losing ground. There is no "holding pattern."
I've tasted enough of this lifestyle and the benefits of it to motivate me to work at my relationship with God, press in to His heart, receive His love, love Him in return, and let that love spill over into my relationships with people. But it all starts with relationship with Him and repeating whatever step in the process I need to repeat in order to maintain peace with Him. This is "laboring to enter into His rest."
Rest. Yes, that's worth it.
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